Education in an Era of Schooling: Critical perspectives of Educational Practice and Action Research. A Festschrift for Stephen Kemmis

286 Pages·2018·3.83 MB·English

by  Christine Edwards-Groves

Christine Edwards-Groves 
Peter Grootenboer · Jane Wilkinson
Editors
Education
in an Era of
Schooling
Critical perspectives of Educational
Practice and Action Research.
A Festschrift for Stephen Kemmis
Education in an Era of Schooling
Christine Edwards-Groves
Peter Grootenboer Jane Wilkinson
(cid:129)
Editors
Education in an Era
of Schooling
Critical perspectives of Educational Practice
and Action Research. A Festschrift
for Stephen Kemmis
123
Editors
Christine Edwards-Groves JaneWilkinson
CharlesSturt University MonashUniversity
WaggaWagga,NSW, Australia Clayton, VIC,Australia
PeterGrootenboer
GriffithUniversity
Southport, QLD,Australia
ISBN978-981-13-2052-1 ISBN978-981-13-2053-8 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2053-8
LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2018950918
Foreword:©BobStake,underexclusivelicensetoSpringerNatureSingapore
©SpringerNatureSingaporePteLtd.2018
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Foreword
And What, Stephen, Have You Wrought?
When Samuel F. B. Morse opened thefirst telegraph line, heclick-clacked,“What
hath God wrought?” Here, as you move toward completing your telegraphy,
Stephen, in some amazement we ponder, “What indeed have you wrought?” In
these pages, we examine the magma you have brought forth, so helpful as we
worked out our own.
What all have you wrought? Of course, it is impossible to say. Words fail to
come close to saying what all. We face the reality of every teacher, researcher,
evaluator: What all? For none of us is it an answerable question. Even “What is it
hereandnow?”isnotananswerablequestion.In2007,underthetitle,“Here,”you
wrote:
Wearenotjustthinkingandsaying.Wearenotjustdoing.Wearealwaysrelating,always
connectedtotheearthandothers.Wearealways,whereverweare,partofearth’sflows,
andtheearthandwhatisinitaremadepartoftheflowsofourrestlessbeingbyourbeing
here.Thoughwemayresist,resentorrejoiceinit,wearepartofacommonhumanity.Our
lives make and leave marks on a shared earth, shared fates. (Kemmis 2007, as cited in
Stake,2010,p.59)
To repeat, “always relating, always connected.” You have written it. You have
taught it. You have shown great faith, Stephen, in sharing, in relating, in com-
municative action. Many of ourfellow writerson educational matters have pushed
for impersonal, objective indications of quality, but you have pushed the oppor-
tunity for enhancing professional collaboration. You and Hannele Niemi (1999)
said:
Wedefine[evaluation]asaprocessofcreatingandsustainingcommunicativeactionori-
entedtowardsmutualunderstandingandunforcedconsensusinandaroundaprogramor
setting.
You may remember that I found that too constraining. I went along with such a
conceptualization in action research. And I was happy to support internal
v
vi Foreword
evaluation, which requires a half deaf ear. But I wanted evaluation to maintain a
priorityonidentifyingprogramgoodnessthatcouldbeseenandsupportedbyarun
of stakeholders, plus program badness that was both obstacle and disaffection.
Gradually, I have come to realize that for most circumstances, you had correctly
grasped the priority.
While you were at the Center for Instructional Research and Curriculum
Evaluation [CIRCE] back in the early 70s, we could count on finding a few
evaluation clients, sponsors, and students who supported not only formative eval-
uation (finding ways to make teaching better), but held the optimistic view that
experience, that is, teaching and student experience, was worthy of the sustained,
criticaleye.Butitdidn’tlast.Now:“Justthefacts,ma’am.”Almosteveryaudience
or board today wants an evaluation contract promising “what works,” something
leveraging, that is, useful in getting more funding.
Back then and lately still, we are taken with MacDonald’s (1976) idea of three
types of educational evaluation, reflecting different kinds of power relationships
(bureaucratic, autocratic, and democratic), with democratic evaluation being:
…an information service to the whole community about the characteristics of an educa-
tionalprogramme…[withits]keyjustificatoryconcept[being]a“righttoknow”thedoings
ofthecurriculumthatthepeoplefundandprotect…
And how to tell? In a chapter “Telling it like it is: The problem of making a
portrayal of an educational program” (1977), you muscled aside the engineering
model(onesizefitsall)tomakeportrayal-makingcentraltosocialcommunication.
You drafted:
An educational program is a complex whole: it involves people, things, places, events,
activities,administration.Portrayalcannothopetocapturethatenormouslycomplexworld
and fix it in some rigid, final form. But it can hope to communicate something of the
complexity,andsomethingofthedynamic,flowingpatternofexperiencesitcreatesandof
whichitisconstituted.(p.3)
Vision counts. You drew our attention to the words of theoretical physicist David
Bohm (1974):
…scienceisprimarilyanactivityofextendingperceptionintonewcontextsandintonew
forms,andonlysecondarilyameansofobtainingwhatmaybecalledreliableknowledge
…scienceresearchdoesnotconsistfirstoflookingatsomethingandthencommunicating
it. Rather,theveryact ofperception isshapedandformed bytheintentionto communi-
cate…(p.374)
Fittingly, that moved you to concentrate more than other evaluation theorists on
evaluation as perception-communication. With Hannele (1999), you wrote:
Suchanemphasisoncommunication,andindeeddialogue,broughtyouintoconfrontation
withmatters ofequityandrace.Thepeopleareadifferentiated population,withamulti-
plicity of cultural values and life styles. How can an evaluation mechanism that seeks a
singlebestrepresentationofvaluesdojusticetoadiversesociety?
WithyourEastAngliacolleagues,DavidJenkins,BarryMacDonald,andGajendra
Verma, you wrote that the engineering model is
Foreword vii
highlyappropriateforsomedevelopmentpurposes.Butitmaybecrudeanddangerousin
theevaluationofrace-relatededucationalprovisionandinmulti-racialcontexts.Itspointof
departure is a consensus about aims and objectives; in multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
settings,diversityratherthanconsensusmustbeassumed.(1979,p.30)
Together with your colleagues at the Centre for Applied Research in Education
[CARE], you established the position that results of evaluation studies are to be
negotiated, neither imposed by evaluator nor sponsor. Nor by funder.
Ah,yes.HadyoubeennominatedforaNobelPrize,Iwouldhavelikedtowrite
the tribute. I particularly would emphasize your recognition of the lack of docu-
mented connection between assessment of student achievement (classroom and
international) and assessment of educators’ success in educating (Kemmis, 1977).
Yourecognizedthatinthesetimesneitherareeffectivelyassessed—andthatalmost
noonecares.Hadyoubeenheeded,thestateofeducationalassessmentmighthave
avoided its present state of gross misinformation (see Rose, 2016).
Yourecognizedthatstudentachievementtesting,asnowcarriedout,providesa
measureofstudentperformance,andthusstudentstateofmind,whenfacedwitha
battery of test items. A student response indicates what is available in her intellect
and disposition, certainly nota measure only of learning associated with particular
teaching.Testresultscanbeusedtoindicatestudentreadinessforfurtherteaching,
giventeachingeffectiveness,schoolquality,andappropriatenessofnationalpolicy.
Teachers are properly cautioned not to consider standardized test scores as an
indication of individual student achievement.
Many teachers have come to consider national assessment as far removed from
classroom practice. You dreaded this future in 1992. Before there were blogs, you
blogged:
Itseemedasthoughnationalassessmentwasanideawhosetimehadpassed.Ithoughtit
had gone to its death more or less gracefully, no longer suited for the parts it once was
expectedtoplay.Ithoughtthat,likeadinosaurconfrontingtheiceage,itwasalumbering,
archaisticancestorofnewersocialpracticesofprogramevaluation,studentassessmentand
school improvement better fitted for an era of greater professionalism among teachers,
greater participation by school communities in the life and work of schools, and more
decentralized and democratic curriculum decision making. But these metaphors of
anachronisticsurvivalmissadeeper,moredisturbingdynamic:likethecicadasthatflyfree
inopenaironlyforafewfleetingweeksafterseveralyearsofslow,subterraneandevel-
opmentfromeggtolarva,crownedbythemetamorphosiswhichdrivesthemineluctablyto
matureadulthoodandthetwinclimaxesofreproductionanddeath,nationalassessmenthas
returned.Whatwormhasbeenfeedinginthedeepdecayofourfearsandnowcomesto
takeitstolloftheharvestwhichisourchildren?(1992)
From Wilhelm Windelband (1894) and others, you borrowed the nomenclature of
nomothetic and idiographic measurement, noting the distinction between mea-
surement for scientific generalization and that for the study of individuals. You
pointed out that achievement scores provide a small picture of each examinee’s
mindatapointintimebutthatthesumoraverageoftheseisnotapictureofwhat
the group learned of the total intended to be learned.
A measure of individual learning as well as group learning needs context,
especially specifying an extent of instruction time, or “pathways” as Rose (2016)
viii Foreword
recently put it. In your endeavors of 1977, in the British context of
computer-assisted learning in higher education, you observed that the diversity of
coursesandcampusesneededanalysisofpathwayportrayalsofindividuallearning
beforecompilationandgeneralizationofwhatwaslearned.Psychometricprecision
couldnotcompensatefortestingforthewrongconstruct.Thatlessonhasstilltobe
learned across the education system. Indicator variables are a stretch.
In that work and beyond, you found special initiative and direction in the
writings of Jurgen Habermas, Paulo Friere, Barry MacDonald, and Ernie House.
Although without a unified view of democratic evaluation, they held common
penchant for being of service to the public. You yourself said (1983):
Educational researchers canmeasurethevalueof theirwork bytheextent towhichedu-
cation becomes, in practice, more rational, just, humane and socially-integrative as a
consequenceoftheircollaborativeeffortswithotherstoimproveit.
You found that people could not effectively arouse themselves unless they had
placesandideasfortalkingabouthowtoprotectandadvancetheirlives.Optimistic
about communicative action, you saw the obligation of scholars and teachers to
provide background and support for deliberation, for exploration of education,
especially the curriculum. Drawing from Miloraad Pavic’s Dictionary of the
Khazars (1988), you wrote:
Iwanttoargue,however,thatcurriculaarenotjustlikemaps,norevenjustlikethecarpet
in[MarcoPolo’scityof]Eudoxia;theyarealsopumasheldontheropebetweenteachers
and students. … [The many] ropes symbolize the dynamic tension of being in social
relationships.(1993,p.4)
You noted that Habermas (1987) spoke of three types of overarching social trav-
elings, those of organizational systems, those of people’s lifeworlds, and those
of the “colonisation of lifeworlds by the functional imperatives of organizations.”
The traffic is such that “people of modern times have difficulty establishing com-
monframeworksofunderstandingacrosssettingsandgenerations.”Forthepeople,
taking collective social and political action becomes more needed and yet more
difficult in highly bureaucratized cultures, thus the call for mechanisms of com-
munication to invent and perpetuate such frameworks for collaboration.
Such, I understand, was the ground for your ideas of “communicative evalua-
tion.” The prime findings, you and Hannele have said (1999), should be whatever
information about educational programs that best facilitates public exercise of
control. You may remember that I have not been enthusiastic about that aim. I see
little market for it. Today, the public has little appetite for those findings we are
capable of delivering, and small trust in what we do. From any point of view, and
countertoourself-promotion,smallisthemarketforinformationthatfeedsdeeper
understanding. Rather than for knowledge, the funders and managers pay to
advance their own protection (Foucault, 1972).
But evaluation has no single role, no unchanging design. Just as teachers
simultaneously teach multiple messages, so do we. We are at once attentive to
multiple stakeholders, multiple issues, multiple uses. However primary the
Foreword ix
orientation to outcomes, economy or equity, evaluators keep multiple values in
mind. There is always good room for attention to public interests.
Publicinterestsareservedbyin-depthtellingofpersonalstories(Kushner,2013;
Stake, 2010). The problem is less the time available than the will to make com-
prehensible. And there you have made your plea. You have urged that we all
include communicative evaluation in our quivers (1980). You have urged we
contributeevenalittletobettercommunicationamongstakeholders,towardmutual
understanding. Amen.
Did we argue about which kind of program evaluation is worth more (both in
anticipation and in retrospect), external non-participatory evaluation or participa-
tory evaluation? Yes, seldom have we the opportunity to choose. Well, we always
havesomeopportunityforcriticalactionresearch,but,howeverwellresourced,that
choice seldom satisfies institutional demands for independent outsider evaluation.
Participatory inquiry lacks protection from self-service. Of course, we want eval-
uation to be self-serving, but not to overlook key faults.
Iamconfidentthatmoneyputoncriticalparticipatoryevaluationisbetterspent.
ButonlytoafewclientshaveImadethatrecommendation.Itsooftenwasapparent
tomethatthepoliticalsituationcallsforindependentstudy.AndIhaveconfidence
thatasanoutsider,Iwoulddigdeepertofindissuestostudy.Iadmittheymaynot
be as relevant and useful to insiders. I should more often have sent them to talk to
you.
Over the years, your click-clacks have been thought-provoking. However,
unpersuaded by your and Robin McTaggart’s (2000) and Susan Noffke’s urgings
for advocacy, I told Sue one time that I thought I should write my own book on
action research. She asked what had I to say? With thought, I realized I had no
chance of saying it better than you had.
Perhaps an accumulation of so many epistemologies led you to give the
twenty-first-century special attention to “practice,” particularly teaching practice.
You devoted concern to professional work, that for which the worker is centrally
responsible for the definition and quality of her work. You pleaded:
Inarangeofprofessions,professionalpracticetodayisunderthreat.Itisendangered,for
example, by pressures of bureaucratic control, commodification, marketization, and stan-
dardisation . . . In these times, there is a need for deeper understandings of professional
practiceandhowitdevelopsthroughprofessionalcareers.
Itwasnottobejustasurveyofactionandlanguage,butaprobingofwhatitmeans
to be “a professional” (2006). You developed a comprehensive overview of
research on practice. You urged thinking in dialectical terms, moving from
‘either-or’ thinking to ‘never either, always both’ thinking. You drew from both
objective and subjective perspectives with a focus on both the individual and the
social, to encompass
practiceassociallyandhistoricallyconstituted,andasreconstitutedbyhumanagencyand
socialaction:criticaltheory,criticalsocialscience(2006,p.3).
x Foreword
ThelasthalfoftheseFestschriftchaptersisprimarilyexaminingthisKemmisinthe
twenty-first century.
Festschrift or not, indeed, Stephen, what have you wrought? While teacher and
learner yourself over half a century, for half the life of teaching and learning as
fieldsofstudy,youhaveprobedthemeaningsofeducation.Youhaveshunnedrote
andritual,despairedofmerepreparationforarmy,vicarage,andfactory.Youhave
turned the mirror on countenance and practice, the microscope on assessment and
privilege, the telescope on aspiration and policy, and the telegraph to distant cul-
tures. Little has escaped your watch.
Allthisansweringbacktowhathaveyouwrought:thescaleofbenevolencefor
a vast spread of children, youth, and doctoral candidates (1998, 2006, 2012),
reminders that they already are part-professionals, azimuths of destiny, caretakers,
historians.Atthebottomofthebox,Ifoundasinglesheet,nodate,onlyidentified
by the hand of Stephen Kemmis, saying:
…youandImakehistory,butnotundercircumstancesofourownchoosing.Stilleachof
us makes choices and all of us share in the consequences. It is our common fate, our
commondestiny.Eachday,eachmoment,bychoosingwhattodonow,youaremaking
yourownmemories,andmakingahistoryallofuswillshare.Youarechoosingwhatyou
willknow,whatconversationsyouwillhave,whatourideasandmemorieswillbe,how
youwillthinkwithothersnowandintothefuture.Youarechoosingwhatyouwillmake,
whatyouwillproduceandconsume,whatyouwillbeabletodointhefuture,howyouwill
fitintheproductivelifeofsociety.Youarechoosingwhoyouwillknow,whatrelation-
ships you will have with them, what you will do with, for and against others, and how
you’ll connect with others and they with you. You are choosing whether to be, and the
extenttowhichyoucanbe,theprimarycauseinyourownlife—aproducerofexperience
—or a consumer of experiences produced by others. You are choosing what will be the
conditionsoflifeforallourchildren.
Bob Stake
References
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scientifictheories.UniversityofIllinois,USA:IllinoisPress
Foucault, M.(1972).Archaeologyofknowledge.NewYork,USA:HarperandRow
Habermas, J. (1987). Theory of communicative action, Volume 2: Lifeworld and system: A cri-
tiqueoffunctionalistreason(ThomasMcCarthy,Trans.).Boston:Beacon.
Jenkins, D. R., Kemmis, S., MacDonald, B. & Verma, G.K. (1979). Racism and educational
evaluation. In G. K. Verma & C. Bagley (eds.), Race, education and identity. London:
Heinemann.
Kemmis, S. 1977. Telling it like it is: The problem of making a portrayal of an educational
program.InRubin,L.J.(ed.),HandbookofCurriculum1977.Boston:Allyn&Bacon.
Kemmis, S. (1977). Nomothetic and idiographic approaches to the evaluation of computer
assistedlearning.JournalofCurriculumStudies(inpress).